Foodism for thought: Author takes the mickey out of a foodie culture gone too far

Author takes the mickey out of a foodie culture gone too far

They wait for hours in the rain just to taste the hottest new gourmet burger. They buy $600 molecular gastronomy cookbooks from which they likely won’t (or can’t) make a meal. And to top it all off, they cast moral judgments on other people’s meal choices. These are what British writer Steven Poole calls not foodies but foodists — “because like a racist or a sexist, a foodist operates under the prejudices of a governing ideology, viewing the whole world through the grease-smeared lenses of a militant eater,” he writes in his new e-book You Aren’t What You Eat. People must wake from their food-addled torpor, this polemic reads, and realize they likely won’t find enlightenment at the bottom of their bowl of local, organic, foraged mushroom soup. He spoke to the Post’s Sarah Boesveld from London:

Q: You open the book with a ‘food rave,’ which brings to your mind a quote from Blur bassist Alex James who said his 20th birthday was about booze, his 30th about drugs, and his 40th about food. Is food the new ‘It’ drug? A: I think for some people it is a kind of drug. And of course food is safer, more legal. I guess a lot of people who used to go to raves and take drugs and party and be rock star bassists have kind of slid into food the same way they probably started wearing cardigans or tweeds. It’s a kind of comfortable middle aged obsession with food. And there’s nothing wrong with enjoying your food, but the idea of getting so obsessed with it that it’s all you think about is just a shame because there are other things we could be thinking about if we weren’t so culturally gastromaniac.

Q: People put an inordinate amount of faith in celebrity chefs, you argue. Why? A: Celebrity cooks have become as famous and as desirable as rock stars, but they’ve also become spiritual gurus in the way some rock stars previously did —John Lennon, for example. I read the other day that Jamie Oliver has been complaining that 30,000 linen napkins a month are stolen from his restaurants ­— it’s almost as though they’re religious relics.

Q: We also seek lifestyle advice and guidance from them. A: It’s understandable because we don’t trust anyone else anymore. We have all of these politicians fiddling their expense scandals and bankers you can’t trust and the priesthood’s had its scandal. But that trust might be a little bit misplaced.

Q: You mentioned Jamie Oliver —what does he represent in all of this? A: I’m not a huge fan of Jamie’s, but at the same time he seems to be a really good bloke and he seems to want good things. What worries me is the way he’s kind of genuflected towards, not only by the general population, but by politicians when they start seeking his opinion on children’s education. He’s not an educationalist —he’s just a guy who can cook.

Q: What got you thinking that foodie culture has gone too far? A: The thing that really tipped me over was when I suddenly realized what I find more than ridiculous and actually quite offensive is the moralistic aspect to foodism — the idea that if you don’t care about food as much as the people who are insanely interested in food, there’s something wrong with you, that you’re somehow morally inferior. I found that really condescending and wrong and I wanted to take a stand against it. There’s a real kind of snobbery and, it seems to me, hatred of the poor. I would even put it that strongly. And I think foodism does tend to entrench a division of classes —‘the masses are eating badly and we must somehow educate them or force them into what we think they should eat and they should be prevented from eating what they want to eat’ as though that’s suddenly going to make their lives better.

Q: Locavores, you say, would much rather buy stuff that helps community at home rather than helping farmers in developing countries by buying their crops. A: Yeah, and that’s something that surprised me. It’s so easy not to think of people who are far away. And even if they do, they have an understandable liberal reaction like ‘There’s something wrong with world trade, isn’t there, and these poor Kenyan farmers should not even be trying to sell their food internationally.’ And a lot of farmers in Africa can’t, there isn’t enough of a domestic market. I admit I don’t get to in my book either, but the fact that hundreds of millions of people just don’t have enough to eat in the world makes this whole Western foodism seem rather ridiculous from that perspective.

Related

Q: Does an obsession with food make us dumber? A: I think it does because it leaves less space around for more interesting discussions. The danger of foodism is just this kind of encroaching triviality — it’s kind of a cultural vandalism when so much of the media have taken over with its nattering about food.

Q: But isn’t that a snobbish observation, that people should care about ‘more important’ things than food? A: I have to put my hands up and say even [Observer food writer] Jonathan Meades, who really liked the book, said ‘This writer isn’t afraid to be snobbish because he’s saying people should pursue more intellectual things.’ There’s no position you can take vis a vis food that isn’t snobbish in some way. Quite self-awarely, I know I’m snobbish about chocolate and parmentier de confit de canard, but I think expecting people to pursue more of what I would call higher pleasures, like the pleasures of authentic art, I think that’s elitist in a good way. I think people are capable of that, but I think they’re maybe kind of lulled into a torpor by the wave of food that’s beamed at them that’s way too difficult to escape.

Q: You don’t think something like molecular gastronomy, in which chefs like Ferran Adria of El Bulli make carrots into foams and gelees, is art? A: It’s an amazing piece of invention and craft —?I’m not going to deny that, and when I went to that restaurant Viajante which is the same kind of molecular food, I had these excitingly strange foods like a piece of roasted artichoke with what looks like shaving foam beside it served on a hot stone. It was fun and it was interesting. But at the same time, that lunch cost something like 200 pounds for two people just for lunch. In the end, this is just kind of fun for the rich.

Q: Your claim that people turn to food because it’s more accessible than sex is a button-pusher — the idea that if you can’t find a sexual partner at least you can grab an expensive hamburger.
A: It’s true, isn’t it? I imagine even Casanova ate more than he had sex. I am being a bit provocative, but it’s not me, it’s they who are talking about food in this highly sexual way in the first place, so they’re inviting this kind of criticism.

Q: In the end you talk about what needs to be the focus is conversation at the dinner table — foodists acknowledge that too, but it isn’t their focus. But how do you shed an obsession like this, one that’s so engrained in media culture? A: I think anyone who’s interested has to try to do it themselves in their own lives. I don’t think I’m single-handedly going to stop this tsunami of foodism by taking the mickey out of it, but I’m hoping that it’ll just explode under the weight of its own absurdity soon.

Q: How have foodists reacted to your call for a backlash? A: Some of them have said ‘This is ridiculous, he’s saying we should just not care about food and that we shouldn’t eat nice food,’ which of course isn’t what I’m saying but they can’t see their way past their kind of defensiveness. But also, there’s a strand of foodists who say ‘In many ways he’s right, this has all gone a little bit too far and it’s all very nice to have nice food and care about nice food, but.’ I think people involved in food are getting slightly embarrassed at the crazy amount of attention devoted to food in the culture and maybe they’re realizing it’s not really helping their cause either.